“Whhhhyyyy?

Because you’ve just spat your drink on the floor and your brother is dripping his all over the table with his straw.”

Was it the straw that broke this mummy’s back?

The day had started well. We had guests over for the bank holiday, but, due to lack of a spare room, one was on the sofa and another was at the local hotel. We joined him there for an al fresco breakfast overlooking the beach. The boys were wearing some smart shirts I got at the church sale for 50p each. It could have worked out. It could have been fun even.

(Pic: the whole family, looking smart, on our way to breakfast. Blissfully unaware of what was to follow)

But I hadn’t factored in their complete inability to wait for food to be cooked, sheer outrage that other people were eating when they weren’t, and then as the sun rose higher so did their tempers.

By the time breakfast was over, they had taken their shirts off and were all demanding to be carried. Rafa did a few of those dramatic falls where a toddler swoons in slow motion, then pretends it is impossible to get up and instead blocks a busy pavement.

I tried just breathing through it, but honestly I needed a coffee. Plus we thought getting them inside could help. But alas that ended in straw-gate.

On the abortive walk back up the hill home they were all hot, grumpy, emotional, tired and wanted to be carried. The whining was like a background drone, constant but surging in waves. Then my husband, James, and I started snapping at each other, and tbh I was pretty close to tears by the time I prised a sweaty boy off me, having lugged him up the hill whilst holding another’s hand.

Half term will do this to you.

You’ll try to pull things off you’d never normally consider and expect them to work. Big outings. Late meals. Hot children. Broken routines. “Making memories.” In fact, we nearly booked a trip to France this half-term, but the thought of it made me so anxious, we ditched it. The packing. Six hours in a van. Still doing all the normal mum jobs once we got there. Cooking. Washing. Sorting snacks. Managing moods.

I realised I didn’t actually want a holiday. I wanted a break.

Pinch points

In the talk I gave for Joeli Brearley, about the mum guilt-free return to work, I spoke about pinch points. These are times in our year when either things at work or at home are intense. Half-term is a classic pinch point.

Resources are down. Capacity is down. Expectations need to go down too. Mum guilt thrives in the gap between reality and expectation. Trust me mama, trying to maintain normal standards during abnormal pressure is a recipe for disaster.

Schools and preschools are closed.

All the usual kids’ activities are off.

Normal routine is out the window.

We’ve got kids to feed (I’ve honestly lost count of the snacks) and entertain all day long.

Oh and this time we’ve got a heatwave.

Personally, that’s a recipe for hot, cranky kids that won’t sleep. If anyone knows how to handle overheating three-year-olds please dm me.

Mums don’t come with built-in circuit breakers

(Pic: Rafa on my lap holding a green pipe cleaner, Jerry clutching “Foxy” next to me)

We are expected to put up with surge after surge of stress without a circuit-breaker. We never get a chance to shed the stress load and reset. It’s not the straw that breaks us. It’s the thousands of tiny unprocessed moments before it.

So give yourself that circuit-breaker. Don’t wait for anyone else to hand it to you on a plate because honestly, they won’t.

What difference will 10 minutes make?

When my triplets were tiny and I was flat out, an American friend who had a two-year-old looked me in the eye and said, “What difference will 10 minutes make?”

I blinked, not understanding. I explained all the work I needed to get done in naptime before the babies woke, pump, sterilise bottles, empty the dishwasher, unload the laundry etc.

“Yeah, so what difference would it really make if you just spent 10 minutes sitting in the garden before you did all that?”

She was right. The to-do list was perpetual. I was pinned down by it, no matter how hard I grappled with it, I’d never end up on top. But 10 minutes alone, sitting in the garden in peace could really change how I felt, and how I experienced that morning.

It gave me a moment to feel like a person instead of a walking task list. Someone just about functioning, getting the next thing done, then the next, then the next.

Give yourself 10 minutes

Last night, after I put the boys to bed, I walked resolutely through the messy kitchen, choosing to ignore the noise coming from their bedroom, straight out into the garden.

I did not tidy up the toys strewn all over the lawn. I resisted the urge to pair the shoes kicked off in the vicinity of the door. I did not even get the washing in.

I just watched the golden sunlight, noticed the colours of the flowers I’d seen all day but didn’t really notice. I listened to the seagulls hoping to get lucky with a bank holiday BBQ. I even crept into my hammock. This involved a short battle with mum guilt who wanted to know why I hadn’t cleaned the kitchen or washed the day’s sandy swimwear yet.

After a day of constant noise, demands and physical touch, the quiet felt medicinal. Restorative. Humanising maybe.

It was a perfect 10-minutes before a nappy-clad Jerry, who should have been fast asleep in his own bed crept in with me.

10 minutes will be over in a flash, so take it and enjoy it.

During pinch points, rest isn’t indulgent. It’s the circuit breaker that stops us completely short-circuiting. No one wants to see Mama blow.

If I gave you ten minutes of quiet alone time, what would you do? Let me know in the comments.

I write no-holds-barred about triplet mum life and breaking up with mum guilt. Hit subscribe to join us and be part of this conversation and movement.

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This image stayed with me, somewhere in the back of my mind.

And now I am a mother, I keep thinking about that jug.

I worry about how many of us are doing motherhood with that jug dangerously close to the top. Mainly because of what everyone else is pouring into it.

Imagine layers, like a deadly trifle. At the bottom: the relentless logistics. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, life admin, the load.

Then the emotional and physical needs of our children. The carrying, soothing, organising, anticipating.

Then work. Or whatever we’re trying to build, hold together or become.

And finally, balanced precariously on the top, the tiny sliver left for us: our hopes, dreams, passions.

They all take up space.

Pic: Frankie dressed as a mermaid with pink denim jacket (I’m not going to defend my 3 year old’s right to sparkly joy), Rafa as a skater boy and Jerry looking preppy trying to ditch the jacket as we walk back home.

The scary part? Nothing stressful had even happened

The other day I went to a yoga class that had a sound bath at the end. For those of you who haven’t tried it, it’s basically lying down on yoga mats whilst someone makes music from different percussion and crystal bowls. The frequency of the sound they create dominates the room and your body - you can physically feel sound. A bit like when you’re standing too close to the speakers at a rave and can feel the bass. It’s mind-blowing and incredibly relaxing. I checked my Garmin when I left, so soporific I was worried how I’d drive home. My stress levels had dropped by 70% in an 60 minutes.

That’s not the shocking part, the bit I couldn’t get my head around was that it hadn’t been a particularly stressful day. Sure, looking after three cocky, boisterous three-year-olds isn’t easy, but it was nothing out of the ordinary.

And that’s the point. Mums are so used to high levels of stress, we’ve normalised them to the point they are like wallpaper. I don’t even particularly notice it. But my sports watch is there all the time measuring my variable heart rate. It don’t lie.

For it even to be possible to have a 70% drop, I must have been pretty close to that jug being full before I walked into that class. And I didn’t even realise it.

Could we be sleep-walking into maternal breakdowns?

When stress stops feeling like stress and just feels like life

I’ve started reading up on motherhood and chronic stress - not the reactive spikes e.g. when Jerry stepped into the road without looking last week and a black Fiesta slammed on the breaks - but that constant background stress.

If you were totally honest right now, what do you think your background level would be?

Here’s an idea. What if you monitored it for a few days? Do you think it would stay constant or dip? Would it be different on a day in the office or a day at home with the kids? Which would be more stressful?

As I type, my husband has just got back from a long commute and a day in the office but honestly, if you’d seen my boys going feral in the library this morning. And the Olympic-level negotiation required to get coats and wellies back on without any public property being destroyed, you’d have no doubt which one of us had the more stressful day.

I’m going to be going deeper into how mums can look after their nervous systems over the next few weeks, but for now, here are things I’m doing when I notice my stress levels ramp up.

Stopping my stress spirals

During a terrible morning last week, in which I’d already barked “clean your teeth” and “put your shoes on” so many times it had become completely futile, I walked away. We were going to be late anyway. I did a few yoga stretches, and came back calmer, with the mental strength to get through the rest of getting them in the van.

Mid-behaviour battles, I’ve also started singing or humming. The boys were all tired and demanding to be carried as we walked home from town today. Whining every step of the way. Until I started singing the colours of the rainbow. Then everyone joined in, we were kind of singing in rounds because everyone just started when they liked but we were soon home.

When they were babies, I used to sing to them constantly. Even in NICU, I would hold them and sing “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley. Looking back, I think I was trying to convince myself that “every little thing is gonna be alright” more than them.

But in all cases, when I interrupt my own stress response and calm myself first, they can then come down to my levels instead of me shooting up to theirs. You don’t want toddlers driving that bus!

How full is your jug right now?

Do you think motherhood has normalised stress levels that would once have felt like serious red flags?

Tell me in the comments. I have a feeling a lot of us are carrying far more than we realise.

I write raw about motherhood and mum guilt. I’m not afraid to write it as I see it. Subscribe for more.

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The Motherhood Movie Trailer

FADE IN. A mum, with a great body wrapped in matching athleisure wear, jogs with a sleek pram down a sunlit street. CUT TO a bustling café: laughter ripples, babies squeal, and the camera zooms in on her, laughing with her mum friends, sipping her latte whilst it’s still hot. CUT TO a bathroom scene in which she wraps her cute baby in fluffy towel, puts on his pyjamas and lays him down in his cot. He falls asleep instantly. MONTAGE of her evening: meditation, yoga, healthy eating, and a wholesome early night with a book

Now, FADE IN again: me, slumped in an armchair, pumping, unsure if it’s day or night. So dangerously fatigued I am beginning to doubt if I’m fit to be a mother. ZOOM TO THE COT IN THE CORNER: The babies cry endlessly. I walk over and do my best to pick them up one at a time. I make up bottles as fast as I can but it’s no use. They keep crying, and then so do I. I can’t remember my last meal, or shower, or the last time a friend came over. MONTAGE of the rest of the day: feeding, winding, changing nappies, sterilising bottles, getting sloppier and sloppier as the day goes on. By the end of the day, the kitchen is covered in a thin, sticky film of SMA powder, the laundry basket is overflowing, the dishes have piled up in the sink, and there’s no food in the fridge but biscuit and chocolate wrappers are scattered all over the sofa.

Which motherhood trailer did you watch?

Other Mothers

When my triplets were tiny, I barely had time to go online. And whenever I did, nothing about the mainstream motherhood narrative resonated. Not the tone in baby product marketing. Not the glossy magazine imagery. Not the match-matchy curated reality on social media. Even triplet mums were managing to stage perfect photos with matching outfits. Even if we started the day matching, bodily fluids would end up on at least one outfit within hours.

I was deep in the comparison trap. I was having an “other” motherhood. A mixed-race triplet mum with undiagnosed PTSD, just trying to survive the day without killing her husband. My reality wasn’t reflected back to me anywhere.

Eventually, I opened up. Maybe it was fuelled by maternal rage but so many of us are having “other” motherhoods.

At the time, I thought it was just me struggling with dark thoughts, who didn’t have a circle of mum friends, who didn’t have that village.

Now I know that many of us for a multitude of reasons, are excluded from this very narrow mainstream narrative of what motherhood “should” be and look like.

I know that in this amazing F*** Mum Guilt community, there are mums of multiples, single mums, breadwinner mums, stay at home mums, mums of children with severe health problems, mums struggling financially. Mums who struggled with mental health, mums who struggled with physical health and a hell of a lot of mums with no village. Mums who don’t fit that mainstream narrative, and if we’re honest totally disprove it.

I believe there are way more of us “other” mothers than the regular, perfect ones. If you don’t know who I’m talking about - rewatch the trailer at the top of this article.

If there are so many of us, why are we so silent?

In a word: mum judgement - that nasty, bitchy fuel that ignites mum guilt.

Bupa found that nearly two-thirds of mums have driven themselves to exhaustion trying to be a “supermum”. And a third had sought help for mental health struggles but kept it secret from loved ones.

That really hit me because it says everything about modern motherhood.

We are struggling, but pretending we’re fine because we’re scared of the judgement we’re opening ourselves up to.

And I’ll be real, it still exists in some corners. I’ve had it in mum WhatsApp groups, and I’ve been trolled online. So I can’t pretend it’s not there. But honestly, it’s the minority.

Badges on board

Last week I shared my idea of badges that have “mum guilt on board” “, PTSD on board” “Anxiety on Board”, and it’s gone wild, particularly on Instagram. Mums have shared it in other languages and mums have commented:

“THIS 👏🏾👏🏾 I’ll order immediately!!”

“I’ll take one of each”

I had a dream that mums would open up, wear these badges and share their truth, and guess what, mums are up for it. We’re done wearing the mask.

Throughout Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week we’ve seen brave celebrities (I’m looking at you Kimberly Nixon), GPs, Mental Health Professionals and mums from all walks of life putting their hands up and saying I struggled. My motherhood didn’t look like that movie trailer version. It was dark. It was frightening. It was hard.

They’ve shown incredible bravery and have been shown compassion, empathy, and love. Yes, I’ll go that far.

The perfect motherhood movie was always fiction.

Real motherhood is messier. Harder. Uglier. Much more diverse than that.

So although the awareness week may be over, we must keep sharing our truths to break the shame, save lives and collectively create a new “trailer” for motherhood.

Because the “other” mothers are not the exception.

We are the majority.

What if the women you think are coping perfectly are waiting for someone else to speak first?

I write for mums who are DONE with mum guilt, perfectionism and the “supermum” myth. Come join us…

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To be honest, I just went into mum mode, that internal gear we all have, where somehow, on autopilot, we do whatever it takes. We step up. We put our own needs, feelings, and well-being aside. We sacrifice whatever we have to - from washing our hair to our very identity - to get that job done.

A switch was flicked somewhere deep within so that I could function: carefully listen to the doctors, ask questions and advocate for my babies in NICU. So I could be an active part in their care plan without falling to pieces. So that I could cope with day after day, paying beside three incubators, even when those days turned into weeks.

So it’s no surprise that when I was in that mum survival mode, I had disconnected from my own mental well-being. I couldn’t afford to acknowledge it. I didn’t have the time to do anything about it, and in any case, there was no alternative. I had to just keep going. I was in the trenches, and three little lives were counting on me.

My husband was really struggling at the time, so the need to “be the strong one” and somehow carry the family through this humongous challenge fell on me, the ultimate superhero. Mummy.

Pic: Me being wheel-chaired to meet Jerry, about 6 hours after I had a C-section.

It took me over a year to realise I had maternal PTSD.

After going into hospital for an emergency visit with one of my boys, I noticed my body physically reacting to the “beeps” of the machines, putting me in fight-or-flight, constricting my throat. It was pure fear.

I asked other triplet mums if this happened to them when they went into hospital, and it did. One confessed she had to change brand of air-fryers because the beeps were too similar to the hospital machines. Yet she didn’t know she had maternal PTSD either.

I had a cursory check-up at the doctors after giving birth, and then the health visitors asked a few questions, but because I was coping and functioning, everyone thought I was fine. And then, with some kind of fucked-up reverse confirmation bias, I thought I must be fine if they thought I was. They were professionals after all.

But I wasn’t.

To repeat my theme of Mother’s Day, WE ARE NOT FINE.

We are battling impossible expectations with no professional support, and often no village. We are trying to be the home-making mums of our grandmothers’ generation and the breadwinners of today’s. The roles are loading up on our plates, and to be frank, we’re burning out.

I’m genuinely worried about how many of my mum friends are burning out. Our minds and bodies CANNOT sustain this.

It’s showing up as a variety of physical and mental health conditions, some of which we don’t fully recognise or understand yet. Like mum guilt, something that affects 95% of mums, but something no GP, health visitor or midwife will ever even mention.

Some of us know we’re struggling, but some of us just think it’s normal. We have no idea that we have a maternal mental health issue, so it wouldn’t occur to us to seek help. We’re invisible.

Remember, it suits society very nicely if we shut up, put up and don’t trouble anyone with our needs.

I got so angry about this, I mocked up these badges. Just like the ones we get in London so people actually understand we need a seat.

Would you wear one?

Imagine getting on a tube and instead of seeing pregnant women wearing the “baby on board” badges, you saw mums, like you, declaring their reality. I’m pretty sure most mums would be wearing them. Maybe next year, I’ll actually make them.

But what can we do this Maternal Mental Health Week? Yes, it’s this week, but you probably didn’t hear about it.

1,Drop the mask with one mum

Send her a voicenote. Tell her she doesn’t need to “be fine” with you. You get it, and you’re always here if she wants to talk or even just vent.

2, Drop the mask here

Tell your truth, share your experience in the comments below. This is a supportive community of mums who want to hear your voice.

3, Ask your workplace what they’re doing to support mums’ mental health

And if they don’t have a good answer, send them my way.

Nothing changes if we keep quiet.

ps. If you want to be part of more honest, empowering conversations about motherhood, subscribe to the F*** Mum Guilt Movement.

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It’s September 22. I’ve had to get over my deep-rooted discomfort with asking for help and sent my mum and SOS message. The triplets have been home for two months. I’ve been doing 24 feeds every 24 hours and, to be blunt, I’m hanging on by a thread.

My mum came straight over, made me a cup of tea and told me to sit down. “Don’t worry, I’ll sort things out.”

I picked up Rafa and went over to the armchair, wearily. As I sipped my tea, I saw my mum rush about my house, getting increasingly stressed. She worked harder, faster, doubled-down on the multi-tasking until she was completely frantic.

I looked up from my chair and it hit me, “Oh, she hasn’t realised yet. She still thinks it’s possible to get all this stuff done.”

Mama, there is no getting through the to-do list.

It’s all a lie.

Let me break it down…

Lie 1: You should be able to have, do and be it all

It’s trying to fit ten versions of you into one day.

Be the fit mum, the organic mum, the sexy mum, the career mum, the stay at home mum, the adventure mum…. Oh and by the way, each of these “mums” comes with a shit-tonne of work.

Lie 2: Everything is urgent

There’s no hierarchy, so everything on your list feels like it needs doing now. Or as I frequently yell at my triplets “RIGHT NOW!!!!”

It’s like whackamole and the only way to get through it is to go faster and faster. Until our arms are nothing but a blur as we whack for our lives, not knowing what we’re whacking or why any more. It’s reactive, it’s not a strategy.

Lie 3: It’s all on you

Don’t believe the hype. This was never designed as a one-woman job! It shouldn’t all be on one woman’s to-do list. The only reason I’m able to sit and write this to you now is because my mum and aunt are gardening with my boys right now.

The way out isn’t doing more. It’s choosing priorities, not perfection. This is the second step of breaking up with mum guilt.

Introducing…The Priority Filter

This tool helped me cope with running a fast-growing business that was often over capacity. I took it into motherhood and gave it a make-over.

It got baked into my thinking 20 years ago. This is how I look at everything on the list.

• Non-negotiable

• Not now

• Not me

• Not happening

Ready to give it a test-run?

Step 1, Do a brain dump. Write out everything that’s on your mental load, your to-do list, the stuff you’re doing, need to do, or have forgotten about. Don’t be frightened by the scale of the task. A mum who’d burned out twice got me to do this. It’s liberating.

Step 2, Work out what really matters to you most. What are the one or two things you can look back on at the end of a long day/week and feel proud you achieved. When I asked this at a recent workshop, we got answers like “Walking in nature with my son at the weekend”, “Reading a bedtime story every night” and “Friday night movie night”.

Step 3, Sort everything on the list into 4 boxes:

• Non-negotiable

  This falls into two groups:
  – what matters most to you as a mum e.g. reading bedtime stories - (see step 2).
  – what has to happen so life doesn’t fall apart e.g. packing lunch to take to nursery.

• Not now
  This stuff matters but doesn’t have to take up precious mental bandwidth right now. We can park it to revisit later e.g. ordering a present for the birthday party in a couple of weeks.

• Not me
  Don’t be a martyr. This is everything that doesn’t have to be done by you goes here. Paid or unpaid e.g. walking the dog. Maybe someone else wouldn’t do it as well as you, but if it is possible for someone else to do it, put it here.

• Not happening
  This is my favourite category. When you take a long, hard look at that list there will be some stuff that you don’t even need to do. Nice to haves. Or perhaps things that are really important to other people but genuinely aren’t a priority for you e.g. I didn’t bother with baby classes. I didn’t bother reading parenting books as when I tried it, they just made me feel shit. I didn’t bother doing anything that involved taking the triple pram on public transport - it just wasn’t happening.

Screen shot this.

This tool enables me to cut through the noise and get some clarity around what matters most right now. It also gave me permission to things that other people told me I should be doing but really weren’t me.

I didn’t need anyone’s approval. If those things got skipped so I could concentrate on what mattered to me, so be it.

Let’s get real

• What actually matters most to you in motherhood?

• What can wait?

• What doesn’t have to be done by you?

• And what’s just… not happening?

If you’re ready to do motherhood your way, subscribe below.

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How I let myself slow down

“The quickest way to show your nervous system that you’re not being chased by a tiger is to slow down.”

I saw this reel on Instagram ages ago and ironically, it came to mind every time I was sprinting to preschool pushing a 75kg triple pram, not daring to stop to check what Jerry might have chucked out. Families would leap out my way in the tight alleyway so I could charge through. TBH the brakes went on that pram long ago, and once I built up speed I couldn’t exactly stop.

And that’s what’s happening here.

Since my piece last week about unsubscribing from the cult of busy, so many mums have told me that they feel addicted to busy but want to stop.

The problem is: when you’ve normalised mum life at the pace of sprinting from a tiger, you can’t just slam the brakes.

If you’ve just realised you don’t want to run anymore, pull up a chair, there is another way…

First, the to-dos

Part of breaking up with mum guilt is choosing “Priorities not perfection”. I’ll do a deep dive next week, but basically it’s about thinning out the to-do list and making sure you’re spending your resources (time, energy and cash) on the things that actually matter to you. And you alone. This takes courage, but the rewards are great - you get to ditch the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Second, the mindset

Plot twist: it turns out cutting down the to-do list is only half of slowing down.

If I think back to previous preschool holidays, I wouldn’t necessarily have achieved much more professionally than I managed this time (a couple of calls where I begged my mum/husband to cover me). The key difference is I’d be giving myself a hard time about it. I’d fret over not being able to reply to emails for days. I’d worry about how it would look if I was honest and told people I couldn’t attend our Friday meeting for weeks due to lack of childcare. In short, I’d try and make it look like it was business as usual when it wasn’t. Ultimately, I put myself under so much pressure that my mental health took a hit.

This time, I didn’t fight it. I accepted it. This is a pinch point. Resources are down. Expectations need to go down. I didn’t try to work (or make it look) as if it wasn’t a school holiday.

What I stopped

• Noisy numbing. Picture the scene. It’s 5:30pm the triplets have just finished dinner and are running off to play before bathtime. They are shouting wildly. I have no desire to chase after them or clean the kitchen, which is now trashed. I put the kettle on and reach for my phone for a few minutes’ break. I scroll on Instagram or look browse Vinted. Noisy numbing feels like you’re giving your brain a break when you’re actually just stuffing your brain with more noise (images, text, information) not giving it the quiet it craves.

• Task switching. Picture the scene. You’re in the middle of making the breakfast when you get a WhatsApp notification to a message with a link to an Instagram reel. You hop on Instagram to check out the reel. While you’re there, you run through all your notifications and start replying to a DM. Just then, the toast pops so you’re back to making breakfast. Each time you switched tasks there was a cognitive cost. Every time you jump from one thing to another, your brain has to stop, reset, and reload, it’s not multitasking; it’s constant restarting. Part of your attention stays stuck on the last thing (like a mental hangover), so you’re never fully present in the next. Do that all day and it keeps your brain in a low-level stress state: scattered, reactive, and far more exhausted than the work itself would justify. Trust me, I know all about this.

• Lack mindset. In short, I ditched the FOMO. Yes, not staying on top of my professional networking WhatsApp group meant I probably missed cool opportunities but, hey, there’d be others. We can go slower and still win.

Pic: Hammock Time

What I started:

• Gardening with my kids. I recommend this for anyone. Even when I lived in a flat, I managed to climb out a window onto a flat roof to grow courgettes. The triplets love getting muddy, digging, and pushing the wheelbarrow around. Every day, we check the tomato seedlings to see if they’ve grown. There’s something really satisfying about the slow pace of growth. As a bonus we get to eat it. The boys love harvesting the rhubarb and make crumble so well now they’re nearly ready to open a pop-up.

• Reading more. I’ve been devouring my guilty-pleasure crime novel (any other Janice Hallett fans here?) at bedtime instead of being on screens, but also I’ve started a new afternoon tradition with the boys. We get the hammock out, I lie in it and they can bring a book and join me. This proved so successful that every evening, I have to cart in armloads of books.
  I had put pressure on myself to arrange lots for the kids to do in the holidays but my mum (an ex early-years teacher) pointed out all they really want to do is have some special time with me. Get yourself a hammock, or at least a comfy garden chair.

• Mini mindfulness. Years ago I did a mindfulness course at the Buddhist centre round the corner from my old flat. Some of it has stuck, but a lot of it went out the window when I became a mum. Now I can bring moments back by asking my kids what they notice in nature.
  What colour is the sea today? What do the clouds look like? How many birds are there in the garden? (This last one was deployed this morning, when I was so desperate to finish my coffee whilst it was still hot I left the breakfast table war zone and sat in the conservatory. Jerry, who struggles to calm himself down, sat on my lap and counted birds silently whilst I sipped my coffee. I didn’t think “companionable silence” was possible with toddlers.)

Slowing down has given me space.

Space for the things I’ve started.
Space to think clearly, because my mind isn’t ping-ponging all over the place. Some great ideas have popped in about running some real-world events - watch this space.
Space to actually be with my kids, not half in my phone.

I feel a lot better and I’m still getting stuff done.

Over to you

Would you like to stop any of the things I’ve stopped?

What would that give you space for?

I write weekly about mum guilt, mental load, and motherhood on my own terms.

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“Do you think you’ve slowed down since you’ve moved?” an old neighbour from London asked.

“No, no,” I said defensively.

And to be honest, life with 3-year-old triplets is hectic. The sheer domestic work 3 little humans can create before breakfast is eye-watering.

But now the boxes are all unpacked and the “work” of moving is done there is no doubt things have slowed.

In the morning, I check the weather forecast, then the tide times and plan my day accordingly. Simplicity itself.

So, why does admitting to slowing down feel like failure? Like you’re no longer in the race. No longer a serious contender.

Why do I feel guilty about it?

Because this version of life doesn’t look like the one I used to chase. It doesn’t feel like the race I was trained to run or even value.

The cult of busy

I’m a striver, an over-achiever, a squeezer of one extra thing. Surrender doesn’t come easy. Even on holiday, I like to stay active.

Years ago, my best-friend from Uni, Sam, who lives in a village, came to visit me in a flat in Elephant and Castle - which is basically the main gyratory and transport hub for south London. Pretty much every bus in South London goes through it day and night. It never stops.

I’d planned such a busy itinerary cramming in exhibitions, restaurants and even hipster plant shops. When I gave her the big reveal she said, “Urgh! I’m so over the cult of busy.”

Had I sleep-walked into a cult? Was I addicted without even realising?

The pattern interrupt

My pattern interrupt came due to 3 things this Easter:

1. Rafa (who is going through a very expensive destructive phase at the moment - an hour ago he snapped Nana’s varifocal glasses for no good reason - I’m about to drive her to Boots for emergency repairs!) breaking my phone forcing me to be offline for a couple of weeks

2. The Easter holidays = 20 days of no childcare

3. The first properly hot sunny days since we’ve moved to the beach - I’m talking hot enough for my boys to strip and run into the sea naked.

I’ve always known I hate multitasking - and don’t even get me started on habit stacking - but mum life requires it. Not only that, but it’s the mental load of switching.

I’m responding to social comments whilst my kids eat their pasta. I’m checking my emails whilst potty training. I’m trying to keep on top of the 100+ WhatsApp notifications whilst shouting, “I mean it, clean your teeth now or we’re going to be late.”

I never liked it. But I didn’t think I had a choice.

Now, I’ve stopped.

If people had to wait longer for a reply… so be it.

If the algorithms get pissed off with me…so be it

When a new client complained there were no slots on my calendar until after Easter, I fought the urge to apologise.

The only call I had over Easter was with my coach. On it, I glanced over at the vision board I made 2 years ago and realised I’m pretty much living it.

There’s a picture of me on the beach with my boys, a camper van, a coffee and croissant in the sunshine, yoga on the sand. My life actually looks like that now. And it didn’t happen by accident. It came from having the courage to commit to 4 uncomfortable steps, which I’ll share with you next week.

Yes, it takes courage to make a change, and to slow down and change tracks. Yes it will raise a few eyebrows and some people won’t get it. Damn, you’ll even question it some days because it feels so alien.

My whole life has been about achieving and proving I’m worthy: the Oxford degree, the awards, even the TedX. “Take me seriously,” I begged the world.

My coach asked me last week, what it would feel like if I stopped “proving” and started believing.

So I slowed down. And I’m starting to think that might be the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

Over to you:

If you really let yourself slow down… what would be different?

Notice any resistance that comes up.

If you’re done subscribing to the cult of busy, you’ll feel at home here.

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This Mother’s Day, this F*** Mum Guilt community came together for a raw, cameras-on, sharing-from-the-hear- to-a-stranger type chat. The best kind, IMHO. I ran with the theme “We’re not fine” because the data clearly shows that we’re not: 95% of us experience mum guilt and 50% of us in Europe are suffering maternal mental health challenges. I say these stats a lot because I think we all should.

I was right in there with some questions that made the mamas really think. Wanna play?

The question that cracked it open

OK, grab a pen and paper and complete this sentence, “I thought I’d be the kind of mum who…”

This cracked open a whole world of unrealistic expectations each of us had heaped on ourself. Personally, I thought I’d be the Earth Mother type, but when I saw a reel of a hippie mum dancing in the sunshine claiming the only way to bond with your baby is to spend the first 40 days in bed together, I realised it just wasn’t me. I mean my babies hadn’t even been discharged from NICU then.

Someone else thought they’d be the kind of mum who cooked homemade meals every night.

Someone else thought they’d be firing on full cylinders after mat leave, back to work with a full social calendar.

Spoiler alert: none of those things happened for us.

And we laughed together in recognition of what’s happening here.

The expectations driving mum guilt

Our reality is not the problem, our expectations are.

There are so many expectations placed on mums today, many of them start externally - perhaps from society (You can have it all, doll), from your Mother-in-Law (You shouldn’t co-sleep, I never did) or perhaps from social media (This is what motherhood is supposed to look like - if yours doesn’t look like this, you’re probably doing it wrong).

Yet bit by bit, like an unwelcome form of osmosis, they seep under our skin. Then we’re in real trouble because they become our own internal expectations of ourselves. We expect that we’ll be able to do, have, and be everything that’s been presented as “good mum” material. But we can’t, Mama. No one can.

The guilt gap

And when we inevitably fall short (we’re only human), we get stuck in the guilt gap.

Expectations on top.

Reality at the bottom.

Our misery and mum guilt in-between.

We all find ourselves here. One of the first steps of climbing out is getting real about what your expectations of motherhood were before you actually became a mother, then you can stop giving yourself a hard time for not meeting them.

Some of mine where honestly laughable, I thought I’d spend my mat leave travelling around Italy eating gelato, baby in a sling, climbing the Alps.

Reader, I barely made it out of my house.

Yet I’d still see all those glorious (if a tad smug) traveller mum posts and feel a bit “this is what you could have won”.

Over to you

Get really uncomfortably honest with yourself and share your answers to these revealing questions below:

• What did you think motherhood would look like… and what does it actually look like for you?

• Where do you feel the biggest gap between expectation and reality right now?

• What’s one expectation you might be ready to let go of?

P.S.We need more raw conversations

If you want to be in the next room like this and part of real no BS motherhood conversations, or watch what happened in this one, drop me a message.

If this hit a nerve, you’re exactly who the F*** Mum Guilt community is for.

Subscribe below to be part of it.

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We are not robots. We’re women, whose divine energy flows.

It’s no wonder so many of us feel “not good enough” when we’re trying to operate like machines in bodies that run on waves.

We have periods of inspiration and action like a couple of weeks ago when I suddenly decided to put on the FMG Mother’s Day Takeover, and we also have periods where we need to recover, take things a little slower. And that’s OK.

I spent most of my career as an entrepreneur. The narrative, culture, and rhetoric in that world is dangerously masculine. It’s about pushing, driving, squeezing, dominating, and competing (all of the reasons I now can’t bear to watch Dragon’s Den - it’s genuinely triggering). None of these attributes are really me. I was all about creative collaboration and interesting ideas.

Until one day, in a Google-inspired co-working space, complete with fake palm trees and hammocks, a wise woman explained something that changed everything. Over a tumeric and ginger shot she said:

“Women are cyclical. It’s our divine feminine energy.”

Here’s the nutshell version. We flow, we find it very hard to be the same, bring the same energy every single day. We have peaks and troughs.

Personally, I have days when I crave company and days when I crave solitude. And left to my own devices, I can choose to balance things in a way that works for me. If you’ve ever cancelled a softplay date because you just can’t face it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But here’s the rub, our kids, our boss, our societal structures expect us to be the same every day. No matter where we are in our cycle, no matter how much sleep we got last night, no matter how burned out we’re feeling.

Robo-mum

And so we create this impossible standard: The fully switched-on, endlessly capable, never-dropping-a-ball Robo-mum. Oh she’s a peach. She never needs a break, never gets run down, always has a cheery can-do attitude and won’t break no matter how much you heap on her plate. She’ll deliver 24/7/365.

But we are not Robo-mum. No one is.

And when we don’t have the energy to do all the things she’s expected to do - maintain endless enthusiasm for playing shops with toddlers, cooking a healthy dinner that everyone will eat, effortlessly returning the home to a liveable state - we feel shit for coming up short.

The win here isn’t pushing through and trying to convince everyone you’re infallible (as the entrepreneurial bros will tell you). The win is noticing your own body, your energy, and listening to the signals for when you need to slow down a little. I’m writing this in my PJs, and am already thinking about getting under the duvet with a hot water bottle and it’s not yet 9pm.

I did this last week.

I put so much into all our FMG events that the following few days I’m a bit wiped out. So, I admit I did sack a few things off and spend some time enjoying my new Mother’s Day present - a hammock - in the garden last week.

One of the steps of breaking up with mum guilt is to choose intuition over influence.

Listen to what your mind and body are telling you e.g. “You could really do with a quiet couple of days” rather than the shoulds “You should sort the garden out”, “You should book the dentist”, “You should order a new phone.” Blah Blah Blah.

But then I remembered I’d just signed up to a sprint where we meet every Friday, and the cheery coach who runs the session had got us to set SMART goals to complete by the following Friday.

I left that meeting with renewed distaste for all things SMART.

All I wanted to do was lie in that hammock. Until a couple of hours before the meeting, I had a mega productive half hour and managed to get everything done.

Have you heard of Parkinson’s Law?

It’s basically this: a task will take the length of time you have to complete it.

And if there’s one thing mums are exceptional at, it’s getting shit done in tiny windows of time. Don’t tell us we can “Have it all” then use “productivity” as a stick to beat us. There’s nothing you can teach us about time management.

But what gets overlooked is energy management. Energy, our most precious and beautiful resource.

Bottom line: mums are efficient AF.

We will always get the thing done. The point is noticing when the most efficient thing of all is to rest, slow down, and recover.

And it goes without saying, that no one is going to offer you this on a plate. It’s up to you to take it, Mama.

Join hundreds of mums who are done trying to be everything to everyone and still feeling not good enough enough.
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Frankie bowled into our bedroom, announcing, “It’s Big Daddy’s Day,” and giving his dad, James, a big hug and kiss. I reminded him that it was not. In fact, it was Mother’s Day, so I should get a cuddle.

“But I only like you a little bit,” (he indicated with his hands about 15 cm apart) and I like Daddy this much (arms spread wide).

“Frankie, you can’t come to the restaurant tonight if you don’t give Mummy a cuddle,” James tried desperately.

It was pitiful. I didn’t want the bribe cuddle.

I wanted to explain to Frankie that I’d given up my whole life for him and his brothers but it would be a pointless argument to a three-year-old who already thinks Daddy is way cooler.

My husband gave me a hug and told me they’d appreciate it one day. Maybe.

Thank God, my own mum booked us massages. Why does it take a mum to see a mum?

(pic: Mum & I with our post-treatment relaxed glow)

Seriously, how was it for you?

Maybe there was breakfast in bed.
Maybe there were flowers.
Maybe the kids made you a card.

Maybe you got the recognition and appreciation you really deserve for once.

But underneath it all, the mental load, the mum guilt, the juggle are probably still just as real as they were last week.

Mother’s Day can feel a bit token. Our one day. Our one chance to grab the mic.

That’s why we’re hosting the FMG Mother’s Day Takeover tonight. So we can get together and have real, raw, honest conversation about motherhood.

I’ll also be sharing the 4-step framework that has helped hundreds of mums break up with mum guilt and make clearer, kinder decisions about their time and energy.

The FMG Mother’s Day Takeover
🗓 Tonight – Tuesday 17th
⏰ 8pm (Zoom)

If you’d like to join us, you can register here:

And if you know a mum who might need this conversation today, please send it her way.

Much love x

Leila

I’d look at the perfect twins and triplets in perfect homes in perfectly matching outfits on Instagram and then look at my porridge-splattered kitchen, messy babies, and heap of laundry and wonder where I was going so wrong.

I’d compare myself to the mums at the library (the only baby activity I made it to was a rhyme time session) one of whom committed to an impeccable 1940s vintage look the whole time. I called her Miss Lemon, Hercule Poirot’s assistant, because she looked like a hotter, millennial version of her. I’d chide myself for not even brushing my hair and wish the municipal carpet would swallow me whole.

And then I saw a reel from a top motherhood influencer and bestseller saying:

“Only psychopaths who never feel guilt. Feeling guilt shows me how much you love and care.”

WTF. This triggered me. I knew how debilitating and toxic mum guilt is, and she was using it as a metric for how much you love your kids. So, by her standards, I didn’t love or care about mine.

What BS!

I was so angry that I did a reel, with no make-up, in my gym stuff, with Rafa in his highchair, announcing an event called “Fuck Mum Guilt” to shift the energy to empowerment. We’re not wearing mum guilt as a badge of honour.

(pic: me looking pretty pissed announcing our first event)

• 70 of you signed up.

• We hit the national media (with a whole heap of trolls to boot)

• We started a movement.

Two years on, I still feel as angry about the incessant expectations on mums, about the lack of maternal mental health support, about the supermum narrative, about mum martyrdom being glamourised. I’ll pause it there. But also, I still find motherhood the loneliest part of my life.

So I’m doing it again.

FMG Mother’s Day Takeover

We’re going to get together to say “F*** Mum Guilt” - you’re not serving us, you’re just making us feel shit with your fake news and gaslighting, and we are coming together to stand up to you.

Join me Tuesday 17th 8pm for a free Zoom where we can have honest conversations about our experiences of motherhood and chuck all our mum guilt on the fire.

I’ll also be sharing the 4-step framework to break up with mum guilt, which has gone on to help hundreds of mums.

If you’re ready to say “yes” to you and “no” to mum guilt, register here:

Grab your free spot

And bring your mum friends.

It’s all getting a bit vanilla, or vanilla with a hint of pink. It needs a radical glow-up. It needs an FMG takeover.

Sure, share your cute family pictures and enjoy that breakfast in bed (you’ll be making it the other 364 days if you’re like me), but I’m not OK with leaving it there.

I’m not OK with how squeezed mums are in a society that wasn’t built around our needs yet bombards us with expectations every single day. I’m not OK with the fact 95% of us battle mum guilt on a daily basis through no fault of our own.

No, in fact, I’m choking on the only slice of toast I won’t make this year.

If there’s one day we take the mic, it’s this one.

Mums rarely get to be centre stage, and on this one day, I don’t just want some floppy flowers and the last card in M&S.

Those of you who were here last year, may remember that I got a card that said, “To a beautiful mum, on your birthday” - it was not my birthday and it definitely was the only card left in M&S.

I want Mother’s Day to be a chance to have conversations about what’s really going on for mums right now and what we’re going to do about it. So I’m talking

• with organisations about how they can actually support working mums

• with anyone who will listen about the fact that 50% of mums in Europe report mental health struggles. Half.

• with you, about how to break up with mum guilt and choose a kinder mindset right now

So, as requested by some of you, we’re holding a TAKEOVER event next Tuesday 8pm (after my boys are in bed).

The FMG Mother’s Day Takeover is simple:
We stop pretending a bunch of daffodils fixes everything and start talking honestly about mum guilt.

And there’s another reason this year’s Mother’s Day takeover is important.

Where it all began

Almost exactly two years ago, 7th March 24, I ran the very first F*** Mum Guilt event.

It was a simple idea: an online amnesty from mum guilt run by a triplet mum who was DONE with it.

Seventy mums signed up. Including some OGs pictured below.
We got media coverage.
And it started a movement.

And two years later, it feels like the perfect moment to celebrate with a Mother’s Day takeover.

Claim your free spot here and say yes to more than floppy flowers this year.

The FMG Takeover

This Mother’s Day, mums don’t need flowers that will wilt.
We need a way to break up with mum guilt - for good.

Mum guilt affects around 95% of mothers, yet it’s rarely called out. And that works perfectly for guilt - because when it stays unchallenged, it gets to run the show.

But the moment we start talking about it openly - with other mums who get it - its power starts to shrink.

Unchecked, it whispers that we’re not good enough.
It undermines our decisions.
It drains our energy and confidence - every single day.

Enough.

If you’re ready to say “no” to mum guilt and “yes” to yourself, join me, Leila Green, founder of the F*** Mum Guilt Movement, on Tuesday 17th March at 8pm.

You’ll leave with:

• A practical 4-step framework to break up with mum guilt

• Clarity on what truly deserves your time and energy

• A feeling of being lighter and unburdened

Register here

Bring the mums in your life who need this conversation too.

Still not convinced?

Here’s what my idol, Joeli Brearley had to say about my workshops:

"Leila combines insight, empathy and practical guidance beautifully. Many shared that they felt seen and understood in a way they hadn’t before."
- Joeli Brearly, Founder of Pregnant Then Screwed

Yeah, I know. I thought about getting it tattooed. I can’t believe that event two years ago has now got to this level.

The day every parent dreads. The day we lost Florence the Flamingo. Now, Florence is not just a toy. She is The Toy.

Florence is Frankie’s soul mate. The toy he can’t be parted from. She is the only reason we managed to wean him off the ratty hospital blanket some kind soul knitted for him when he was in NICU, which was dragged through London parks and pavements until it quite literally unravelled.

I try to keep Florence at home, but somehow Frankie still sneaks her out. Stuffed into pockets. Hidden under coats. Smuggled past me like contraband.

I only realised she’d made it out when Frankie proudly introduced her to the entire café. Alongside his matching Florence jumper, obviously (the £3 Vinted buy that won Christmas!)

And then…

Somewhere between the church toy and clothes sale, the greengrocer and the library… Florence flew away.

Had she migrated?

Had someone else picked her up, paid for her and taken her home from the church sale?

If motherhood had a job description

I’d definitely include: crisis management, problem solving, decision-making (or more specifically, extremely unpopular decision-making), nervous system regulation (your own and others) and of course leadership.

Thank God I had some foundations to fall back on. Because when Frankie realised Florence wasn’t there, when his bottom lip started to tremble, and he just wanted to be held, it would have been easy to slip down the slalom slope of panic.

I could feel it rising in the back of my throat and gulped it down. Not today.

I knew if I let that guy steer this ship, I’d be dealing with the Boomerang Effect. Three overtired three-year-olds absorbing my anxious energy and firing it straight back at me threefold. I couldn’t afford to make this situation harder than it already was.*

So I took it minute by minute.

Back when my teeny premature babies were in NICU, my husband was still playing tennis. At night, he’d read books by elite coaches about match-day psychology, completely oblivious to the triplet-shaped tornado about to shred his hobby.

One thing stuck.

Top players don’t obsess over the scoreboard or the magnitude of the match when they are on the court. They lose themselves in the point they’re playing.

“Play the point you’re in, Leila.”

So I did. I didn’t allow myself to mentally fast-forward to how apocalyptic bedtime would be. I took a breath, made a plan. Slow calm words, slow calm movements to signal to the kids that I’d got this. I tried to affect a nonchalant tone, explaining Florence was probably just waiting for us.

It worked. Frankie didn’t cry, but held my hand, his eyes downcast and spirit broken as we retraced our steps over town. I have to admit, when we went back to the church sale, and no one had seen Florence, I caught myself spiralling: posters, Facebook groups, small-scale search operations.

Thank God for the miracle that then befell - Florence was hanging up on a hook at the greengrocer’s. Hallelujah.

Frankie and Jerry had fought so passionately over who would carry the bag of strawberries and melon that he must have dropped her. Finally, I could breathe out. Phew! I live to parent, I mean, crisis manage, another day.

Let’s be honest, this won’t be the last time a beloved toy goes walkies.

So let me know

• Has your child ever lost The Toy? What happened?

• How do you stay calm when a small crisis threatens to become a big one?

• And most importantly… do I need to buy a backup Florence? (I didn’t even realise this was a thing until other parents were shocked I didn’t have a collection of replica Florences and started sending me eBay and Vinted links!)

I write about mum guilt, what I do to keep calm and sane with 3-year-old triplets and of course, how to break up with that bitch, Mum Guilt. If you’d like a weekly dose, hit subscribe below:

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*I wrote this at 6am. Yes, I felt smug about that too. By mid-afternoon, I had triggered a full-blown case of the Boomerang Effect.

The accountants rang in a flap, saying I had to sign something before lunch or they would redo it and charge me again. Stress. A day with no childcare is not the day to get me to read, question and sign financial documents.

Then I pranged the car on the way to get Frankie’s diarrhoea sample tested.

My stress levels went through the roof. And of course, my children bounced that energy straight back at me. Screaming. Fighting. Crying uncontrollably on the floor (which is what I wanted to do). The whole lot.

(Pic: Rafa with a temperature of 40)

It was either cry it out or go for a run. I chose the latter.

On that run, I realised that I hadn’t had ten minutes to myself all week. No wonder I was on the edge.

Now, I don’t think I’m an introvert, but the sonic onslaught of 3 x 3-year-olds barking demands and shouting over the top of each other, all day long, all half-term long, left me spent. Craving quiet. Solitude. Just listening to the waves as I run along.

But the house was a tip, there was so much that needed doing. I felt like I should be catching up. Like I hadn’t earned the right to stop yet. Not until the home was neat, calm was restored, and mum-jobs were done for the day.

But I was suddenly so desperate to be on my own, I had to get out. To hell with the mum guilt.

Mum guilt will always tell us there is something more important we should be doing. That we don’t matter. Our needs are at the bottom of the pile. That a break is something we have to earn.

And I’m calling BS on all of that.

We need to stop demonising rest.

There, I said it.

It’s not about hacking, habit stacking, or squeezing more into already full days.

Not starting our mornings at 5am to get ahead.

If we make it to 6:30am without anyone waking up, that’s a win.

Before I had my triplets, I was an entrepreneur locked into that hustle culture. It was all about squeezing every drop, always-on, high performance. Yes, in the short-term it worked. But that was when I had no responsibilities - financial or living and breathing.

But now I know when my body needs to rest. When I need everything to stop. When I need silence. When I need to recover.

But we’ve been conditioned not to listen to our bodies, not to believe them when they are yelling, “Slow down, pause, rest”.

In any case, we can’t afford to when there are always a million things that need doing. Always others vying for our time, attention, energy. We feel like we’re behind all the time, so stopping feels wildly irresponsible. Radical, even.

I did my homework and found that 93% of mums experience burnout. That’s the cost of not listening. Not noticing when we need to give ourselves a break - literally.

(Pic: boys and dog all feeling much better on the beach)

Give yourself a break

On Monday, when the boys went back to forest school (hallelujiah), aside from a couple of calls, I took it easy. I walked along the beach with my dog. I recovered. Yes, it’s totally legit to need to recover from half-term.

I also gave myself a break from my phone. No socials. No WhatsApp. It felt so different. Instead of being in the middle of several things – checking my emails whilst potty training Rafa, whilst cooking the dinner, whilst shouting at the dog – I wasn’t splitting myself between real world and online world in the same moment. I could focus.

My thinking was no longer incessant. It wasn’t that constant, exhausting mental loop of what I hadn’t done, what I needed to do, what I might have forgotten.

I realised I had slipped back into that always-on mindset. That belief that I should be doing more. Being more. Achieving more. But that’s not who I am anymore. And it’s not who I want to be.

I’m calling BS on the whole notion that we need to deserve or earn a break. That we can only have that once everything else and everyone else is taken care of. Because to be honest Mama, that day is never gonna come.

So if your body is telling you you need to rest, take a break. Take it now.

Not later. Not when everything’s done.

Now.

You’ll feel much better for it, trust me.

If this hit a nerve, join the F*** Mum Guilt Movement by subscribing here.

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I write about mum guilt, the mental load, and the realities of triplet mum life.

Yes, I was tired. Jerry wet his bed at 3am and Rafa got up at 5am.

Yes, I was hungry. I’d had a couple of coffees and a mouthful of cinnamon bun that little sticky hands snatched away from me.

But it was more than that.

“NO. I WANT THE PINK PLATE. I WON’T EVER EAT THAT”

This, I’m ashamed to say, was the straw that broke Mama donkey’s back. I suspect I’m not the only mum to be pushed over the edge by mealtime defiance.

My body was screaming at me to feed it properly, and had been all morning. All the time I meal-planned for the week. All the time I pushed the kids around the supermarket. All the time I spent making them lunch. I was way over borrowed time.

They were tired and hungry too. And a whole family that’s tired and hungry is, to quote Bonnie Tyler, like

“living in a powder keg and giving off sparks”.

My husband noticed me weeping over our pitta breads, unable to make the hummus, and put his hand on my back.

“Are you OK?”

I couldn’t even begin to explain what the matter was.

It was everything. The fact that every-fucking-thing today had been on me from the 3am wake-up to making lunch at 2pm. From scraping the mould out of the washing machine to planning a cultural family morning.

It was all me.

Me.

Me.

And all I needed was to eat without someone barking a demand at me.

(Picture of the boys drawing at the Turner Contemporary prior to Pink-Plate-Gate)

We hold everything. We just push through.

We automatically deprioritise ourselves. “I’ll eat in a minute,” we tell ourselves. “I’ll grab something later”. “I just need to get this done first”.

Meanwhile, our stressed bodies are saying, “Woah, I can’t hold on much longer.”

When I finally made some sense. I acknowledged that I was anxious about half-term, which started the next day. No childcare for a week. None of the usual activities I take the boys to are on. And my mum, who often helps me out, is off on a yoga retreat in Sri Lanka - good for her. I always knew moving away from my family would be the hardest thing about relocating. But it’s times like this that it really pinches.

Pinch points

In the talk I gave last week, about the mum guilt-free return to work, we spoke about pinch points. There are times in our year when either things at work or at home are intense.

Half-term is a pinch point.

December is a pinch point.

Going back to work after maternity leave is a pinch point.

Things are intense. Capacity is down. Expectations are up. And, paradoxically, this is where we need to double down on prioritising and looking after ourselves (even though time is tight). This is when we should be cutting ourselves some slack, not just pushing through. Or we wind up crying in our pitta bread.

So I gave myself a break. I told my husband how I was feeling, and we arranged for him to cover me for a call with my coach. He booked family swimming one lunch break. I had a bit of breathing space built into my week. I didn’t feel suffocated anymore.

When Monday rolled around, I had grand plans of taking the boys to the library. I know it’s not exactly Euro Disney (a friend is taking her kids for the week - but I’m not slipping into that comparison trap).

But they weren’t having it.

And for a moment, I felt that pull.

Like I should push it.

Like staying home somehow wasn’t enough.

Then I realised my expectations were working against me. They wanted to stay at home and do puzzles and build towers. So I got to sit on the sofa while they played and reset. That was enough. When we ventured to the beach to walk the dog in the afternoon, everyone was calm and surprisingly balanced.

Lesson learned. I need to build in some pressure valves, some moments of breathing space not just for me, but for them too.

So this half-term, or anytime you’re in a pinch point:

• Stop deprioritising yourself. Eat. Sit down. Take five minutes. You don’t have to come last.

• Drop the “make it magical” pressure. You don’t need a packed schedule of incredibly expensive experiences. Quiet calm is underrated.

• Call it what it is. This is a pinch point. This too shall pass.

Have you ever broken down in the middle of an everyday mum task? Please tell me, I’m not alone…

If this hit a nerve, you’re not alone.

I write about mum guilt, the mental load, and what it really looks like to stop putting yourself last.

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I don’t feel at ease with the phrase “self-love”. That soft pink fluffy stuff just isn’t me.

Maybe if I’d had a more “normal” childhood, this kind of healthy self-worth would come naturally. But it really doesn’t. Therapists have tried, honestly, they have, but I can’t really do it. It’s so alien to me.

So instead of forcing it and feeling really fake and cringe, I try to reach for the next best authentic thing.

Gratitude.
Respect.
Sometimes even pride, on a good day.

I can be grateful to my body for growing my babies.
I can respect myself for keeping everyone afloat.
I can occasionally feel proud of how I’m handling it all. This week, I was so proud to give a workshop on mum guilt to Joeli Brearley and the Growth Spurt community - welcome any new mamas who met me there!

Below, I’m sharing a few quick, little ways to show yourself some 💜 this V-Day.

1, Spend some time on your own.

Do you remember that scene in the SATC movie where Charlotte hides from her kids in the pantry? I didn’t have kids when I watched it. I didn’t get it. Now, of course, I do.

That’s level one.

Level two is leaving the house on your own.

A walk on your own. A coffee on your own (I treated myself to one this morning). Any kind of treat on your own.

Because most of the time, our brains are scanning:
Who needs me?
What’s next?
What have I forgotten?

For 15 minutes, switch that off.

Ahhh.

2, Look at yourself in the mirror.

Resist the urge to look at the wrinkles, spots or imperfections. Don’t get all judgy. Just give yourself eye contact. Yes, it will feel a little odd, but stay with it.

Now see yourself as someone you’re proud of.

Someone who’s doing her best in a challenging situation.

Someone who deals with the shit that comes her way and finds her way through.

Someone whose kids can rely on her unquestionably.

Someone doing a fucking amazing job.

Hold that gaze a moment more.

3, Shut down that inner critic

My yoga teacher today told me about an experiment in which one group of people said loving words to some flowers and another group said awful words.

Guess which flowers blossomed? Guess which ones died?

We never set out to give ourselves a hard time, but our inner critic can get too loud, too dominant, too convincing. So next time it pipes up, just breathe, notice it and remember it’s just fake news.

Bonus: if you actually buy yourself a nice present, that’s Level 10.

All my love, mamas.

Mwah x

Because this isn’t just a problem for the mums on the call that day. It affects all of us. Even if the role is exactly the same, even if the team is exactly the same, even if the senior management are exactly the same, even if the KPIs are exactly the same, you, Mama, are not.

You have been through a seismic shift: emotionally, mentally, physically (and, of course, financially). You have evolved, morphed, problem-solved your way to where you’re standing today, triumphant and resilient. So no, the view is not the same.

But the expectation is that you will slot back in like nothing’s changed. Like a typewriter that just needs to be slid back over to the left to repeat the whole thing again and again, week after week.

That unrealistic expectation will fuel mum guilt, because no matter what you do, you cannot be that pre-kids version of yourself. She doesn’t exist anymore.

When people ask me about my life with triplets, I quote the opening line of a book we studied at high school, The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country, they did things differently there.”

I cannot go back. I cannot bouce back. I cannot get my pink back. Back is gone.

Was that hard to accept? Did I have to grieve it? Do I miss it sometimes?

Yes, but nonetheless, I must accept it.

Acceptance not expectations, is the first step of breaking up with mum guilt for a reason.

But what happens then when you're expected to act like nothing ever happened?

In a word: masking.

Now, mums are pretty good at this, but that doesn’t make it OK.

Bupa found that nearly a third of mums put on a facade of coping due to fear of being judged.

But get this. In a totally separate study, I found that roughly a third of mums don’t feel understood by others in the workplace.

How could you be understood if you can’t be your true authentic self?

That’s a lot of mums quietly holding it together behind a confident smile. Until something has to give.

As I said in Stylist last year,

Let’s not forget that 26% of parents leave work within a year of returning from parental leave.

The real cost of masking

When you mask, you suffer in silence. You cannot ask for support (or, possibly, even accept what’s offered, in case, it’s seen as a weakness). It’s like that old adage from the TV Dramas, “Anything you do say can be used against you.” So you keep quiet, keep your head down, mask.

At the same time, you’re trying to “prove” you’re as committed as Brad, who has no children and can be in the office at 8am every day after his spin class, can do the overseas trips (and therefore bag the best clients and bonus) and has time to keep on top of every industry trend. Nice one Brad, mine’s an oat cortardo on your way in.

We need to get real about the expectations fuelling this mum guilt.

The first step, is just to acknowledge what they are. No judgement.

Some of them will be external. Your boss may have expectations around your hours, availability, commitment, and attendance of out-of-hours events.

Your family may have expectations on your mothering, how much you should be working/earning.

Social media will have expectations on every damn thing.

And then there’s you. What are you setting as the bar of success for yourself?

God knows, I put myself under more pressure than anyone to show how committed I was from pregnancy onwards. No one else was pushing me, asking me to prove myself. It was all coming from me. I was literally trying to launch a product from a MacBook on a labour ward (more on that tragi-comedy another time).

If you don’t know where to start, finish this sentence, “A good mum should…” as many times as you can.

(All of us, during another chaotic morning, racing to get everyone ready)

I need your voices

Next week, I’m going to deliver a talk on mum guilt and the return to work for Saint Joeli Brearly (she is a saint to me, as without her, I never would have got free childcare for my triplets when they turned two. I said a prayer of thanks to her every time I dropped them off at preschool.)

It’s a big gig for me and the FMG movement.

The stats are alarming, the theory is sound, but what I really need is you. I need real mums sharing their experiences of their return to work - what made you feel supported, what didn’t, what do you think we need to change.

I am fighting this fight for all of us, and I want to represent real mums and share their real voices. So if you’d be happy to share how you found your return to work and what you think organisations can do to make this transition better, please comment or DM me if you want to stay anonymous.

Thanks to every one of you. I know it feels like an uphill struggle, but the change we push for now could make things better and easier for mums in the future.

Much love,

Leila

To be honest with you, I really needed some good news.

My mantra this year is: “Get out of self-doubt”. But somehow it had me in its grips towards the end of last week. I was stretched too thin, my three-year-old triplets had been incredibly challenging (no one told me 3-year-old boys get the same testosterone boost they do in puberty!), and I had been feeling the Imposter Syndrome badly.

Can I really do this?

Is it too much?

An opportunity to speak at a festival came along but it’s the same week as my boys start primary school. No can do.

This plus coming off some women’s supplements that totally messed up my hormones (maybe my three-year-olds weren’t the only ones going through a pseudo-puberty!) left me feeling pretty down.

Then this happened on Monday

I was on the Dig It podcast - where Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley talk about the messy, unglamourous side of being a mid-life woman. Uncensored and raw.

I came across it last year when they did an episode on mum guilt and Imposter Syndrome. I was hooked.

I sent in a voicenote on mum guilt and, of course, a couple of our legendary F*** Mum Guilt T-shirts and then nothing…

Then Christmas…

Then still nothing…

And then on Monday, they did a whole section on it. Go straight to it here

or watch the whole show by clicking below:

Jo described the T-shirts as “genius”, and Zoe said she’d worn hers “with pride”.

It felt like one of those moments where the Universe taps you on the shoulder and says: keep going, you’re on the right path.

Not to mention Jo’s very sound advice on dealing with Imposter Syndrome when you come back after having a baby. It was just what I needed.

If you would also like to wear your F*** Mum Guilt T-shirt “with pride” a la Zoe, your wardrobe upgrade is waiting for you here.

Over to you, the FMG community, who should we send our T-shirts to next? Think big.

I’d love to get one on Lily Allen or Paloma Faith. They speak about motherhood in such a raw, unapologetic way and aren’t afraid to raise a few eyebrows. What do you reckon? Let me know, and I’ll try to pull it off.

But what about you?

Have you managed to claim any time back for yourself in 2026 yet? If not, go back and watch the three-minute meditation I shared last week. Remember something you used to love that you haven’t had time for in a while and bring it back, or another year will zip by.

I actually got my paints out last week, although I was feeling pretty wiped out and low. I wanted to throw most of what I painted in the bin, but that’s not the point. I sat there for an hour, lost in colour. Not rerunning the negative stories in my head.

On an episode of Jo & Zoe’s podcast, they had Dr Rangan Chatterjee on, and he said: “Joy builds resilience to stress.”

So where can you find a little pocket of joy just for you this week?

Even 5–10 minutes is worth it. It can be tempting to just crack on with the chores if you don’t have long, but consciously choosing to spend that time doing something that brings you joy matters.

Listening to a feel-good song. Closing the curtains and dancing (I may have done that last night). Actually sitting down to have a cup of tea or coffee while it’s still hot. Sending a voicenote to a friend.

This stuff doesn’t actually take that long, but it makes you feel a lot better.

If you only had 10 minutes to do something for yourself, what would you choose?

Shoulders dropped. Breaths slowed. Ideas germinated. Because we stopped long enough to remember ourselves.

Most of us are so used to pushing through, running pretty darn well on empty, that even pausing can feel uncomfortable. Like we haven’t earned it yet.

I shared the simple framework I use to ensure I claim some of the time and space in my life for myself. It works for me as an overstimulated triplet mum, and it will work for you too.

Because here’s the thing. If you don’t proactively prioritise and plan time for yourself, there’s a landgrab from all angles, Mama. And somehow, you’re always the one left with nothing.

I didn’t want you to miss out, so here’s the framework, along with a powerful 3-minute meditation that will reconnect you with all the things that used to fill your cup, bring your joy and make you smile.

Trust me, these 3 minutes will start you on a path to a happier 2026.

Give yourself permission

To stop for three whole minutes. Sit down, close your eyes, listen, and then grab a pen and paper. Write down whatever comes up. Honestly, you might be surprised by what pops up straight from your soul.

I specifically wanted you to think about:

• an activity you used to do in your alone time, because this is often the easiest place to start

• something you used to do to show your body some love, because it absolutely deserves it

• people, because if I’m honest, motherhood has been the loneliest part of my life

We then chose just one thing that we wanted to bring back.

Making it happen

Then, before all the mum guilt-inner-critic coalition could pipe up to thwart us, we got real. We committed to a concrete step we could take. Some of us started researching trips we could take child-free. I found a local writing group I’m committing to go to monthly. We got things moving.

Comment below and let us know what came up for you.

The whole FMG community is rooting for you. I’ve definitely got my pom-poms out and am bringing full Gwen Stefani Hollaback vibes.

If you’d like the full Radical Mama Reset recording - there is another 57 minutes of gold - just DM me.

Can’t wait to hear what this kicks off for you.

After the pressure of Christmas, more pressure is not what we need. And yet so many mums feel pushed towards big resolutions, total overhauls, and impossible expectations.

This audio is an invitation to a different kind of reset.

One built on small, meaningful ways of filling your cup. Shifts that fit real life. Support that feels human, not performative.

Join me Monday 8pm - come in your PJs if you like - and you’ll leave with a tailored action plan of how we’re going to fill your cup this year.

Sign up free here:

ps. I’m sorry this is going out so late - it took this long to get my triplets asleep and have the house quiet enough to record audio. Does Steven Bartlett have this problem?